The flying monkeys got me...

Helis and fixed wing

AMA 957918
IRCHA 4345
AMA Intro Pilot Instructor

Pirate Kid Skeleton by RadDezigns.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Worst engine install, ever!

It's just shy of 3 am... The white face cloth is coated with the carbon fiber that was all over my face, in my boogers, densely embedded in my t-shirt.

I went through a couple of sets of engine side bar mounts getting the engine in the Spitfire. The problem isn't the engine, it's how they built the motor box. It's pre-drilled for several orientations, and all the mount holes have back nuts in them. This limits where you can drill custom holes. Add to that they decreased the available space on the front of the box by putting wedges on either side. Between these two issues my choices were limited, and I ended up Drexel modifying the mount bars to fit the engine. Hence, covered with carbon. I used larger arms to compensate for the material I removed. It's plenty strong.

Why did I stay at this all night?  Really? You have to ask? It was an engineering problem, and there was no way (thumps chest) I wasn't going to solve it.


You can see the Dremel marks and mods.



Its came out pretty nice, after all that. The real challenge will be figuring out how to set up the throttle and choke control rods... more on that later.

Time to sleep... let it go.

No comments :

Post a Comment